Here at Mycorrhizal Systems, we love trees. No really, we do… without trees, where would we collect all the truffles?

Just before Christmas we held an open day for the Chefs’ Guild at the truffle-dog training-school in Hampshire. The event was a huge success with talks on the range and diversity of truffle species, truffle cultivation with microscope demonstrations, a fantastic truffle lunch and truffle-training/hunting demonstrations. Mufti, Marion’s prized truffle hound, was really the star of the day. Jose Suter (of the chefs’ guild)  said “This has been an absolutely fascinating and fun day, we can’t wait to come back!”.

Just before Christmas we held an open day for the Chefs’ Guild at the truffle-dog training-school in Hampshire. The event was a huge success with talks on the range and diversity of truffle species, truffle cultivation with microscope demonstrations, a fantastic truffle lunch and truffle-training/hunting demonstrations. Mufti, Marion’s prized truffle hound, was really the star of the day. Jose Suter (of the chefs’ guild)  said “This has been an absolutely fascinating and fun day, we can’t wait to come back!”.

Recently, you may have seen several media articles claiming that a new project is being launched in France to clone the black truffle (Tuber melanosporum).  These articles made headlines around the world and led to claims that truffle production will increase with scientists cloning truffles and trees. In fact, such experimentation is not new and has been the source of many projects for at least the past 20 years. Several studies have focused on truffle-strain selection as well as selecting and cloning well-performing host trees.

The dates of the next International Workshop on Edible Mycorrhiza Mushrooms (IWEMM6) have just been released and our very own Dr Paul Thomas will be sitting on the international scientific committee.

In early November 08 we started to collate results from our Welsh plantation, where we are seeing excellent brûlé development (burnt areas around the tree base caused by the truffle growth) just 9 – 12 months after planting. We recorded data from 77 trees and only seven were not yet showing signs of brûlé development. This is really good news as we were not expecting such good development for at least two more years. We are now planning a full vegetation survey across the site as well as biological soil measurements to see what is happening below ground.

Over the summer we were delighted to help a good friend of ours, Paul Merret, with growing truffles on his allotment. Paul, an award winning Michelin-starred chef and TV presenter, has recorded his first attempts at allotment gardening in his new book ‘Using the Plot: Tales of an Allotment Chef’. This account of self-sufficiency in the 21st century is a great read and beautifully produced. With the section on growing truffles, we think it makes a perfect gift – but then again, we’re truffle mad and so are perhaps a little biased!

Since opening the dog school, many hunters have come through our door and our expert trainer has worked with a wide range of breeds. Their abilities, across the board, never cease to amaze. Recently, we have been discussing starting further research on breed specific behavioural characteristics and scenting abilities, when along came the Barbets! The Barbet is an active breed, equally enjoying work and play with a thick shaggy coat over its whole body (“barbe” is the French word for beard). A review of the breed-specific training day can be found here: www.barbet.org.uk/news21.htm

Some very exciting news- earlier this autumn we received photos from our welsh plantation showing a very distinct ‘brûlé’. A brûlé is a burnt-looking patch of ground, devoid of vegetation underneath the tree caused by the truffle fungus- these normally take several years to appear and signal imminent onset of fruiting of the truffle. This is particularly exciting as they have appeared on around 70-80% of trees planted last winter! With an average age of 9months (from planting), these results are every exciting indeed,